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How to ruin a brand and influence people

Name means a lot, especially when it’s been around a while. Changing a name can be a big deal.

Look at Fedex and their purchase of Kinkos. Which they’re apparently planning to rename to Fedex Office. This bloomberg article talks about the change, I haven’t seen the change yet, hopefully Fedex realized the gigantic mistake it would be to kill the enormously recognizable Kinkos name. I think they’d fair better ditching the Fedex Name. If they’re looking to capture mindshare in the kinko’s crowd.

On a smaller scale but equally disastrous, Adobe is extending their brand confusion to their community. A little history: Adobe created Flex Camps a while back, as one day events for Flex developers to come together to learn and network. Topics ranged from beginner to advanced, and were generally well received. There have been Flex Camps all over the world.

At MAX adobe decided that the community was confused about Flash, Flex, the platform and everything.

I think the confusion is Adobe’s. No one I’ve met is confused about what Flex is or what Flash is.

It’s unclear where Adobe is going, but the first victim of this internal name changing, confusion, mayhem is the Flex Camps, now called Flash Camps, lame. No matter what Adobe thinks or wants. Flash is not Flex is not Flash.

Flash is the swf movie. Flash is the IDE Flash devs and designers use.

Lee has a post rationalizing why we’re all Flash Developers, but taking his arguments to their more natural conclusion, aren’t we all web developers? I mean our code is run on the web (except AIR, but hey), so why not be web developers? Of course that doesn’t work Adobe wise, since “web” isn’t an Adobe product.

Flex has a name though. So does Flash. Why waste all that Brand? Flash is known for things, things that make sense to Flash, and fit well. Flex has a similar following and brand recognition, and most Flex developers, don’t want to be Flash developers, any more than a Flash Developer would want to be called a Flex developer.

I dunno, just my .02, what do you think? How far will it go? Flash Builder? Tour De Flash? Flash Platform Data Services?

Tags: Adobe Flex, Adobe MAX

MAX 2008 Day 2!

Day to of MAX, is well, kinda like Empire Strikes Back, without the Luke screaming like a girl part. I’d say the General Session today however was very Revenge of the Jedi (yeah I’m old skool, look it up).

General Session

Adobe’s guys advertised day 2 as a must attend general session, which frankly, it usually ain’t. Not the case this time ’round. They really brought their A game, showing off the (finally) cool designer developer work flow that CS4 brings to the table. I was impressed, and had less of a vaporware feeling.

They also gave us a bunch of eye candy to drool over in our sleep for the next year; Alchemy, Bolt, Flash Catalyst, etc.. Very cool stuff!

I was especially keen to see Adobe finally giving the CF crowd an IDE. CFEclipse is great and all but, not fully tied in. Seeing what Bolt is capable of, WOW.

Alchemy, mmmm I dunno. Am I the only one who thinks that “Alchemy” is the old days term for the science of turning lead into gold? I mean really, is that the mental image we really want for a product? We’ll see. I’m not a gamer, and not a C head, so it didn’t do much for me.

Ryan will be able to try is ‘flexmagically’ contest again, I think it might be a bit more successful.

For the first time I was actually pretty jazzed about searchable SWF, that’s pretty cool, and might finally solve the niggling problem of SEO and Flash RIAs.

The last few minutes of the general session, were given to Ted Patrick to pimp the new groups.adobe.com, I’m not sold yet on the idea, since the previous incarnations weren’t that great, and I’m not sure how this effort will go, but we’ll see :)

The Day

When Tom and I do an event, day 3 tends to be box lunch, and only so so, since so many people fly home at various times through the day, usually starting just before lunch. The box lunch affords people to grab a meal and go. It’s weird that the Tuesday lunch, was box lunch. That certainly doesn’t bode well for the Wednesday lunch. Fingers crossed.

360|MAX had a great day! The crowds were way better, as word spread. Jun’s prank app is absoultely, positively hilarious.

Tags: Adobe Flex, Adobe MAX, Conferences

MAX ‘08 Day 1 Recap

Looooooooong day.

I’m about to pass out, but wanted to get my thoughts on MAX ‘08 day one down on paper.

For Tom and I, MAX San Francisco, started on Sunday. We ran some errands, put stickers on our fliers for 360|Flex Indy, and then headed over to Moscone for some socializing. We hit up the community leader mixer thing, which was awesome. Congrats to the team that organized it.

Monday morning we hit up MAX bright and early, setting up our 360|MAX Unconference area, which is a cool area.

Enter the Keynote. So, oddly enough the keynote didn’t start until 9:30 am, yet the doors opened at 7am. I found it a bit weird since breakfast was just sandwiches.

The keynote was good, I gotta admit, The pre show dude was AWESOME! (video above). Shantanu and Kevin are both great presenters I have to say. Kevin more so, he’s very casual, and seems to be pretty unflappable, even when things don’t go the right way.

The information in general was pretty much what you’d expect, “State of Flash” type stuff, blah blah. One cool thing was some future tech they demo’ed as strictly early labs internal, but really sweet! Screens that know what’s going on around them, even where they’re pointed. I’d post a video, but then it occured to me, it might not be fully “open to the public” I can’t imagine why, but ya never know. It was cool though!

OK, the rest of the day.

Tom and I were pretty much tethered to our unconference area, which went really well. Slow start, but I think we’ll start seeing more people as the word gets out more.

Our sessions were all kick ass, especially Mate and Degrafa, which really pulled folks in. Tuesday has a bunch more killer sessions!

The bummer is not being able to wander around as much as I’d like. MAX for me is walking around the halls, finding people to chat with. This time around, I gotta chat with those who come to us.

The general session for TUesday is supposed to be Gumbo, Thermo, and future goodness. We’ll see. I’ve got my Thermo and gumbo installed to play with.

360|Flex Indianapolis MAX discount!

Also for MAX attendees, make sure to swing by and see Tom or I. We’ve got 100 tickets to 360|Flex Indy, for only $100 each. That’s $150 or so off our lowest possible price. Available only during MAX, so there’s only two days left to get this price!

Tags: Adobe Flex, Adobe MAX, Conferences